BEN HEATHER

Heritage advocates are calling for calm as the wrecking balls start to swing in Christchurch.

Four hundred heritage buildings have been damaged in the Canterbury earthquake and aftershocks.

While most of Christchurch’s heritage buildings have survived some, such as the Arts Centre, have been badly damaged.

In the central city, which houses many heritage buildings, five buildings have been demolished.

One of these, Manchester Courts, sparked an uproar, with heritage advocates unsuccessfully taking their fight to the High Court.

The Christchurch City Council has received another six applications to demolish heritage-listed buildings.

It is also holding pre-application talks with another 20 landowners keen to level their own little slices of history.

The demolition pace, so far, has been sedate.

However, the council will consider asking the Government for new powers to speed things up.

They would include allowing it to process demolition applications for badly damaged heritage buildings without public notification, and limiting people’s ability to appeal against decisions through the courts.

The proposal is not popular with heritage advocates.

Christchurch Civic Trust chairman Tim Hogan said with 400 heritage buildings damaged, more landowners would be seeking demolition orders.

“There is going to be a flood in the next three to six months.”

The public deserved to have a say on decisions that would affect the city’s character, Hogan said.

A spokeswoman for the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, Anna Crighton, said the city council should be trying to prevent demolition, not encouraging it.

“Everything has been so rushed. It doesn’t bode well,” she said.

The earthquake had wreaked enormous damage on Christchurch’s heritage buildings, but the recovery process had the potential to do even more damage, she said.

Some landlords had shown no regard for heritage buildings since the quake.

“It has been much worse than I expected.”

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said he understood some people wanted to preserve heritage at all cost, but this needed to be balanced against restoring the central city as quickly as possible.

“If it’s listed [as] heritage in our plan, we are going to do everything that we can responsibly and reasonably do to ensure that that heritage is retained.

“But we also need to ensure that we can move quickly.”

Christchurch Central Labour MP Brendon Burns said the city had to “acknowledge that we have lost some gems and will have to see more go for safety’s sake”.

“But let’s have an opportunity as a community to rank the 400 heritage building damaged by the quakes and see what agreement can be reached on what’s most important to save.

“Otherwise we risk a cityscape dotted by $3 a day carparks and Stalinist tilt-slab monstrosities.”

In borderline cases it is hoped the Canterbury Earthquake Heritage Building Fund will help tip the balance away from demolition.

The fund currently contains about $4.3 million, with contributions from the Government, Fletchers Building and councils, but that could swell to $20m.

Property owners with an insurance shortfall can apply for grants covering up to half the cost of repairs.

It is unclear how far the fund will stretch, but heritage advocates have said they are confident most category-one buildings can be saved.

However, many less-celebrated old buildings have already been levelled. Hogan said these old buildings, such as the Caxton Press building on Victoria St, were valuable and their loss would change the look of the central city.

New earthquake-strengthening rules, passed by the council in the weeks after the quake, would also tip the scale against many character buildings, making them too expensive to repair.

“It will have an impact because, ultimately, it’s always about money.”

How well Christchurch cares for its quake-hit heritage may be a question for future generations.

However, a glance over the Tasman to Newcastle, which was hit by a magnitude-5.6 quake in 1989, demonstrates the cost of hastily flattening damaged character buildings.

Newcastle historian and heritage advocate Margaret Henry said the buildings demolished after the quake had left an emotional as well as physical hole in the community.

“I was going past the [demolished] Century Theatre site on a bus one day and a woman said to me: `Every time I go past that empty site I feel sad. My husband took me to the pictures every Saturday night there and bought me a box of chocolates’.”

– The Press

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